Posted on 10/03/2011 8:11:44 PM PDT by grey_whiskers
Elizabeth Warren, running for the US Senate in Massachusetts as (what else?) a Democrat, recently let fly with a little indignant speech which was supposed to serve notice to all of the hicks in flyover country of the essential moral superiority of the Eastern, statist position:
There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there good for you!
But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didnt have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea God bless. Keep a big hunk of it.
But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.
I wish to engage in a little Alinsky-type commentary of my own, and point out several contradictions implicit in her statement.
She just sold out the entire multiculturalist swath of the left. We were originally supposed to believe that all cultures are equal, but that some cultures (namely, ours) are LESS equal than others. But in her quote, she seems to claim that factories and wealth creation are GOOD: in contradiction to fellow moonbats as varied as Howard Zinns praise of the Iroquois, Stewart Brands wish to be transported back to the Stone Age, and even the Unabomber.
Even worse, Warren just undid over a century of Marxist-inspired hatred of the West, the entire Western colonial exploitation view of Europe and the United States. How can I say this? Well, under the politically correct model, all of humanity was at more or less a subsistence level, without riches, but without real want, either, until the greedy oppressive Christianist Westerns came and despoiled their land for short-term greed: like the indigenous peoples in James Camerons Avatar. But now we find out, it isnt exploitation of indigenous peoples or theft of their untouched mineral and natural resources that makes wealth: why, its the presence of roads, schools, firemen, and police! Oh, and by implication (the rest of us paid for), taxes. So heres a couple of little questions: how many roads and schools (and firemen and police) were there in the Americas, before the coming of the Evil White ManTM? For that matter, what was the tax rate in Equatorial Africa back when it was merely the Dark Continent?
...and is the wealth of Saudi Arabia due to their tender governmental oversight, or to the presence of vast quantities of petroleum?
Warren also makes a big deal out of the advantages of government, as though that this is all there is to government. Its funny that while she mentions marauding bands, she doesnt mention the worst band of all, the IRS: which regularly takes 35% of a factorys profits right off of the top. And the rest of the government, like a Biblical plague of locusts, does its best to eat out the rest of the substance, with a veritable swarm of regulations, legal pitfalls, and environmental strictures. Why are these costs not netted out of the illusory debt owed to government by the factory owner? (Think of jobs prevented or destroyed instead of Obamas mythical jobs created or saved and youll get the picture.)
Speaking of jobs created or saved by the way, it becomes obvious -- as a speck on a window is obvious, its always there but unnoticed until you look for it -- that one of the reasons Warren and her ilk speak like this of government, is that in her world, this *is* the function of government. She is a Harvard professor, running for a governmental job. Without government grants, without taxes, without state funding, the vast majority of these jobs would disappear. She may claim to Harvards endowment as an exception to this rule, but in that case, she is merely cutting her own throat: for if her own, current position, in the very sanctum sanctorum of academia, is not dependent on government, but upon the generosity of private benefactors, then surely the position of the factory owner is even more the child of the private sector.(*)
(*) With one notable exception, and a single word or two will suffice. Solyndra. Unions. Is it any WONDER liberals think that every good thing comes from above, from the Democratic Party, from whom there is no deviation, nor light of turning. For in it we all move and live and have our being.
Cheers!
“Social Contract” is a euphemism for totalitarian collectivism, especially when used by “progressives” like this piece of work.
I live on a dirt road and maintain about half a mile of it myself. Grade it in the summer, plow it in the winter. Dig out the ditches, replace the culverts. We homeschool our children. Our nearest neighbor is half a mile a way. We are our own police.
And we are born-again, blood-bought, Bible-thumping, jumping-up-and-down CHRISTIANS.
We are the nemesis of the totalitarian collectivist “progressive”. We are everything they loathe and despise. When it comes time for them to reduce the “surplus population”, folks like us will be at the top of their list.
But we won’t be passive about it, either.
She is a vicious collectivist control freak who REALLY means: "If you've ever benefited from government involvement, however indirectly, I hereby declare that, you henceforth are the property of the state and we are your masters. Not only must you do what we say and pay up what we want, but you must hold your tongue if you're tempted to even think of criticizing government."
Are you SURE that's not really Jimmuh Dhimmi Carter in drag?
yah...if that don’t creep you out right before Halloween, nothing will.......
But, he who built the factory paid for all those things too.
The Erie Canal and the entire system of railroads was constructed specifically to move goods, and built basically entirely by private capital. IOW, she’s just totally full of sh!t.
Thanks grey_whiskers.
A "contract" is an enforceable agreement voluntarily entered into between two or more persons. The system to which Warren is presumably refering, in which government imposes progressive taxes, borrows additional money (even in good times), and then spends the sum of the two in a multitude of ways so complex and convoluted that no one truly understands it, is neither voluntary nor an agreement. It is therefore not a "contract," social or otherwise. In many cases, it could better be described as counterproductive, legally sanctioned theft, fraud and waste.
Warren also seems to be saying that, because the government provides some goods in common to all of us, i.e roads, education, and police, some of us should pay more for those items and all of the other aspects of government, many of which do not constitute common goods, than others. She offers no justification for this position. If you and I both benefit from common goods, but you prosper more than I because you make better decisions, work harder, and/or take more and wiser risks, why should you pay more to support those common goods (and the rest of government) than I?
Mrs. Warren:
It is true that no one ever got rich without help from others.
It is a more operative truth, in our current system, that no one ever got rich without enriching others.
The first debate is tonight at UMASS Lowell. Can’t wait....
Excellent summary!
Why is a 501(3)c entity, Harvard, not losing its non-profit status for her campaigning?
The average Harvard professor now has a salary of about $185,000 per year. Professors in the right disciplines, such as business, can reportedly double their salaries through outside consulting and other income sources. In 1980, the salary of a Harvard professor was about 5.5 times the average US per capita income; today, $185,000 is about 7 times the average national per capita income, and can often be leveraged into much higher actual annual compensation.
http://theamericanscene.com/2008/05/12/is-harvard-just-a-tax-free-hedge-fund
2008 figures
I wonder if Warren gets to keep her Harvard salary in addition to her federal salary.
she’s a marxist POS. Where was daddy bigbucks tonight? (Soros)
yeah, Massachusetts needs this pig like the USA needs Osama for four more years....
Thank you so much for your excellent essay, dear grey_whiskers!
Americans benefited from World Wars I and II, the American Revolution, Civil War etc. Therefore all Americans MUST support every war in the future...
Same logic...
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